a far, vague murmur of the city's life whispered up, with faint blurs
of steamer-whistles from the river--bore Turkish spoils of battle.
Here hung more rifles, there a Kurdish yataghan with two hand-grenades
from Gallipoli, and a blood-red banner with a crescent and one star
worked in gold thread. Aviator's gauntlets draped the staff of the
banner.

Along the eastern side of this eyrie a broad divan invited one to
rest. Over it were suspended Austrian and Bulgarian captures--a lance
with a blood-stiffened pennant, a cuirass, entrenching tools, a steel
helmet with an eloquent bullet-hole through the crown. Some few framed
portraits of noted "aces" hung here and elsewhere, with two or three
photographs of battle-planes. Three of the portraits were framed in
symbolic black. Part of a smashed Taube propeller hung near.

As for the western side of _Niss'rosh_, this space between the two
broad windows that looked out over the light-spangled city, the Hudson
and the Palisades, was occupied by a magnificent Mercator's Projection
of the world. This projection was heavily annotated with scores of
comments penciled by a firm, virile hand. Lesser spaces were occupied
by maps of the campaigns in Mesopotamia and the Holy Land. One map,
larger than any save the Mercator, showed the Arabian Peninsula. A
bold question-mark had been impatiently flung into the great,
blank stretch of the interior; a question-mark eager, impatient,
challenging.

It was at this map that the master of _Niss'rosh_, the eagle's nest,
was peering as the curtain rises on our story. He was half reclining
in a big, Chinese bamboo chair, with an attitude of utter and
disheartening boredom. His crossed legs were stretched out, one heel